chapter 2

ASHTON

The screaming started again.

Three hours into this interrogation, and he hadn’t given up a name.

“He doesn’t know.” Trace pushed up from where he’d been leaning against the wall and dropped his arms. He raked a hand over his head, frustration coming off him, but I understood it. I did. It’d been three months since the bodies had been pulled from the water. While Justin Worthing had been a good employee, we were here because of Justin’s woman. Kelly. She’d been best friends, roommates, coworkers, and everything to Trace’s woman, Jess.

They’d been sisters.

“How’s Jess handling everything?”

I was guarded in my approach.

Jess and I, we weren’t on friendly terms. We weren’t on any terms, and for a valid reason. I’d put her through a torture session, more psychological than physical, but it put a rift between Trace and me.

He and I had been best friends all our lives, attending the same private high school, same undergrad college. When he moved west for graduate business school, I went with him and started my first business. After that, he joined in, and we’d built our own empire separate from our families, but as much as we wanted to distance ourselves from the family business, it never quite panned out. Both of us were standing in this warehouse, watching a man being tortured because of those same family businesses we tried to get away from—the Walden and West Mafia families. That was me and him. In one night, he and I went from breaking free and taking the legal route of living, to each of us stepping into our respective roles as heads of our families.

In one move from our enemy, the Worthing Mafia family, my uncles and my grandfather had been killed. I made the decision. I stepped up and took over. Despite being put in the same situation—his uncle killed on the same night—Trace still considered not taking over and getting out.

He’d been thinking of leaving, for her. His woman.

Then one phone call changed everything.

Justin’s and Kelly’s bodies were found, two people we thought had been hidden by the 411 Network. That network was known for smuggling people and hiding them if they feared for their lives. They usually helped abuse victims, but over the last few years, they’d started hiding potential victims from the cartel and the Mafia.

Justin and Kelly hadn’t been taken by them, and we were in the process of trying to find out who’d killed them.

“What do you think?” he snapped at me.

I steeled my insides, knowing he was in pain because his woman was in pain, though that was putting it mildly.

Jess Montell had been a parole officer when we met, and then she went legit, becoming an in-demand painter. But that one call set her on a different path, and she was now helping to run the West family Mafia business alongside her man, my best friend.

He sighed, his eyes flashing, before he came to stand next to me. We were in a second-floor office, a one-way mirror acting as our window so we could oversee the torture taking place beneath us. Trace rubbed a hand over his forehead, cursing under his breath. “She’s not eating. She’s not sleeping. I don’t mind taking over the business, but Jess is acting like a vigilante on our behalf. She’s going to hate herself when she stops, when she starts thinking clearly again.”

I grunted, understanding. It’d been her intel that had given us this guy to question. Her intel was wrong. She was starting to lose it. She was pushing for information just to get information, whether it was real or not. That was bad business for everyone, dangerous business for everyone.

“Goddammit!” Trace stepped back, picking up a knife and flinging it at the far wall. It embedded from the blow, and I watched below as they heard that happen. They paused, glancing up. I reached over and flashed a light, signaling them to keep going.

This hadn’t been the first time an incident like that happened.

Prior to my own interrogation of Jess, I’d been a lot less quiet on this matter, but that time was gone. I was in a precarious position, and I needed to curtail what I would say to my best friend, who was slowly becoming my best friend again. My brother.

Still, I knew I had to say something. “You need to let me take over.”

“I have been!”

I turned, slowly, locked down.

Trace was anything but. His eyes were wild. He was on the verge of losing it.

I gave him a look, saying quietly, “I need to take over, Trace.”

“God—” He stopped, swinging back to me, and his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck have you been doing if you haven’t been leading this?”

“I’ve been following Jess’s intel, but this isn’t the first time her intel was wrong. This is the third guy this week. You have to rein her in.”

He let loose a myriad of curses. “You rein her in. She—”

“She’s in love with you.”

“They killed her best friend because of me.” Agony flared in his expression.

I couldn’t let myself feel anything, not right now, not when I needed to steer him to the sidelines. He and his woman. They were too emotionally involved. It was blinding them. “Trace.”

“Stop it, Ashton. I know what you’re going to say.”

I almost grinned. “Probably. You’re the analyst, after all.” I took a step toward him, softening my tone again. “But you know I’m right. It’s been three months. Jess isn’t helping anymore.”

He turned away, his shoulders tightening. “Be careful where you step next, Ashton.”

I had been, for three months.

I took another step closer. “She’s hurting and she’s making it worse. You know this. Pull her back. She’s on the edge.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” He winced as he said it, his head moving back.

I’d lost family, but it hadn’t been my family that had helped to kill my own people. That’s what his father did. And Trace had to carry that, knowing his father was part of the reason everyone was hurting now. But while we could trace back the killings of my family and his uncle to the Worthing family, we couldn’t with Justin and Kelly.

The Worthing family blamed us, saying that we’d killed one of their own, even though Justin had been an innocent. He wasn’t in their family business, and he’d been in our employ for a while before he realized how both sides escalated. He took himself out of the equation, himself and Kelly, but now no one knew what was happening. Jess’s involvement had gotten back to the Worthing family, so while they thought we might be behind it, they also weren’t totally sure anymore. I knew this because I’d been on the end of a phone call from Nicolai Worthing, the new head of their family, and he said as much to me.

It’d been a fishing call, trying to find out what he knew, but also a tentative truce had been offered until we found the murderer. I’d not accepted, but I hadn’t fully rejected the offer either. Because of that, there’d been a ceasefire of deaths in the last two and a half months.

We were both looking for who killed them.

“I don’t know, Trace. She’s your woman. She’s suffering. You have to be the one to pull her back.” I waited until he looked my way. This time, I couldn’t be soft anymore. “And you know that.”

Enough time had passed, at least between him and me.

He was struggling. That much was obvious, but he closed his eyes before swinging back to the guy strapped to a chair below us. “They turned her mentor against her. They tried to kill her mother. That was my father who did that, because he was working with that family, but whoever killed Kelly—that destroyed Jess. Kelly was the good part of her. That’s how Jess sees it. She’s slipping, and I have no idea how to pull her back.”

I stepped to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Just one. For comfort. “You have to, because if you can’t, she’ll never come back. I will find Kelly’s killer. I will do this, for Jess. For you.”

“Ashton.”

I heard it. He was giving in, in that one word, one name.

Knock, knock!

My hand fell from Trace’s shoulder as my main security guy, Elijah, stepped inside. His eyes went straight to me. “There’s been an incident—” He looked at Trace and faltered.

I frowned but went to him. “What is it?”

“At Easter Lanes.”

“Molly’s place?” Trace stepped next to me.

Molly Easter was good friends with Jess, and they’d gotten closer until Kelly’s death. I didn’t know the current state of their friendship, but seeing Elijah falter in Trace’s presence, I was taking that he worried about sharing.

“Is she okay?”

He nodded, his eyes darting back to Trace again.

Right. She was alive, but something more had happened.

I turned to Trace. “I’ll handle this.”

“Molly—”

“Marcus Easter is owned by my family. I’ll handle this.”

“You told me you’d handle that.” Trace’s jaw clenched as he pointed out the one-way mirror/window.

“Molly falls under my territory.”

“She’s friends with Jess.”

“They’re not that close, and you know it.” They were friends, but I wasn’t totally lying. They weren’t best of friends, not like Jess and Kelly, not like Trace and me. “Her father’s debt to my family extends beyond the grave at this point. I will handle it.”

“Ash—”

“I’ve been lenient regarding Kelly’s killer, but not with this one.” My tone was firm, and my gut sharpened because he had better not push this. Not with Molly.

Reading me, Trace nodded and stepped away. “Fine, but when Jess finds out, I’m telling her to call you directly. You can answer to her about Molly.”

A new fire had started in my stomach.

It was low and simmering, but it was always there when Molly Easter came into play. I smiled, knowing how deadly that would look because that was how I felt inside. Deadly. Lethal. And a part of me wanted to come out to play.

Unlike Trace, I liked being cruel. I liked killing. I liked the ruthlessness of this world, but I’d been holding back for him, for my brotherhood with him, for his woman, for my very delicate relationship with Jess, but Molly—she was a whole other factor.

Seeing that, he cursed softly and shook his head. “Don’t break this one.”

Another scream sounded out from the man, and I went back to the mirror as I heard Trace leave.

The guy arched backward, his back almost breaking in half as my man held a knife to his stomach. I saw the blood dripping down, and finally, finally, a part of me was being let free.

I inhaled the freedom, but I knew a dead end when I heard it.

Elijah was still in the room, waiting for my order. I gave it: “Release the man.”

“Kill him or . . . ?”

Our men couldn’t be identified, but it wouldn’t matter. This man wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t dare, so I shook my head. “Drop him off at the doctor’s parking spot. She can take care of him for us.”

“Will do.”

“Elijah.”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure to call ahead so the security cameras are turned off.”

“Got it.”

But it wouldn’t matter because there’d be no investigation into the man who was almost killed by torture. There wouldn’t be because everyone already knew who’d done it.

Me.